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Chan, C. S. (2018). At the Edge of Two Worlds: Rethinking the Portuguese Diaspora in British . In C. W-C. Ho, R. K-S. Mak, & Y-H. Tam (Eds.), Voyages, Migration, and the Maritime World: On China's Global Historical Role (pp. 231-242). , Boston: de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110587685-012

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This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms Catherine S. CHAN 11 At the Edge of Two Worlds: Rethinking the Portuguese Diaspora in British Hong Kong

For centuries, the Portuguese have journeyed across borders. At the height of Por- tugal’s expansion in the fifteenth century, the Portuguese swept through foreign and transformed foreign communities and peoples. Its gradual decline in the late sixteenth century left behind traces of and its as peoples of Portuguese descent experienced intermarriage and came to be assim- ilated by native locals, resulting in the birth of a Eurasian population. As with all histories of migration and transnational movement, identity negotiation is a never-ending construction that varies according to context, power, interaction and experience: the Melakan Eurasians identified strongly with their Portu- guese background, particularly influenced by the realities of a formal Portuguese ­Settlement formed in 1933 by the British government.1 In other Southeast Asian settlements, Portuguese Eurasians slowly shed off their ethnic Portuguese identi- ties, especially as many were born in Southeast ; having failed to witness the glories of Portuguese colonization, they experienced instead new rounds of colo- nization and subsequent decolonization, succeeding initially in dominating new forces through the use of their Creole but later becoming assimilated themselves into local societies.2 From transforming others to being ­incorporated into other societies, the various Portuguese dispersions around the globe have without doubt demonstrated the fluidity of migrant identity as a product of social

1 Significantly within the secluded Portuguese Settlement, the Portuguese Eurasians spoke their own patois language of Kristang, celebrated traditional festivals, were all Roman Catholics and were highly devoted to protecting their settlement area. For extensive studies of the Melakan Portuguese, see Beng-Lan Goh, Modern Dreams: An Inquiry Into Power, Cultural Production and the Cityscape in Contemporary Urban , (New York: Cornell Southeast Asia Pro- gram Publications, 2002), 123–144; Kok Eng Chan, “The Eurasians of Melaka,” in Kernial Singh Sandhu and Paul Wheatley, eds., Melaka: The Transformation of a Malay Capital C. 1400–1980, vol. 2 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1983), 264–283; Ronald Daus, Portuguese-Eura- sian Communities in Southeast Asia (: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1989), 6–27. 2 One vivid illustration is the case of the Portuguese in Batavia. According to Daus, the Portu- guese dominated even after and during the invasion of the Dutch owing to the wide use of Creole Portuguese in the area. This picture would later fade out as Malay began to dominate, incorpo- rating the Portuguese subsequently into the Malay community during the early 19th century. For this, see Daus, Portuguese-Eurasian Communities, 6 –2 7. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110587685-012 234 Catherine S. CHAN interaction, institutional framework and collective renegotiation. This study works on such pre-existing observations to highlight the unique context and complex discourse of Creole migration in the Macanese narration through their experience of first diaspora in Hong Kong. Stepping into Macao during the mid-fifteenth century, the Portuguese flour- ished in utilizing Macao as the center of shipping and trade, further consoli- dating their political authority over the territory. Between 1560 and 1640, trade from Guangzhou to Nagasaki and was made possible en route Macao and goods were shipped to Goa and through Malacca from Macao.3 Par- ticularly enticed by this economic edge, Portuguese settlers subsequently estab- lished their community and built their lives in and around Macao,4 mingling over time with native communities, resulting eventually in the emergence of a Macanese population.5 However, as the tides turned, Macao soon became a place dominated by the growing influences of British merchants under the flourishing British Empire.6 Despite the existence of a Portuguese administration, the major- ity of the Portuguese in Macao could only work under and for the British and cer- tainly not without a sense of bitterness.7 Notably, it was common for the British to perceive the Portuguese in Macao as valuable, yet non-European laborers owing to their mixed racial background and linguistic competence in , Por- tuguese and English; the Macanese, in turn, expressed an absence of resistance towards such identification.8

3 R.D. Cremer, “Origins and Early History of Macau,” in R.D. Cremer, ed., Macau of Com- merce and Culture (Hong Kong: UEA Press, 1987), 32. 4 Churches, for instance, were built by the Portuguese in Macao during this early period. For this, see Michael Hugo-Brunt, “The Church and Former Monastery of St. Augustine, Macao,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians XIX, no. 2 (1960): 69–75; “The Convent and Church of St. Dominic at Macao,” Journal of Oriental Studies 4, nos. 1 and 2 (1957–1958): 66–75. 5 José Pedro Braga, The Portuguese in Hong Kong and China (Macau: Fundaçao Macau, 1998); Siping Deng 鄧思平, Aomen tusheng Puren 澳門土生葡人 (The Macanese of Macao; Xiang- gang: Sanlian shudian youxian gongsi, 2009); Ana Maria Amaro 瑪麗亞 ‧ 阿馬羅, Dadi zhizi: Aomen tusheng Puren yanjiu 大地之子 ‧ 澳門土生葡人研究 (Filhos de Terra: A Study of Macao’s Macanese; Aomen: Aomen wenhua sichu, 1993). 6 Philip J. Stern has done an extensive study on the East India Company in The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 7 As Braga observed, ambitious Macanese subsequently engaged in the Opium business but many to no avail. See Braga, The Portuguese in Hong Kong, 63. 8 Maurice Collis, “Macao, the City of the Name of God,” History Today 1, no. 4 (1951): 49.  At the Edge of Two Worlds 235 AU: We have shorten the running head. Please check Away from Two “Homes” and comfirm.

Attempting to turn the tables, the Portuguese arrived in Hong Kong following British victory against China in the First Opium War. As a ripe opportunity for greater advances, this group of Macanese was amongst many others who thought the newly established British colony offered a chance for change, particularly in attaining upward mobility.9 Significantly in their experience of first diaspora, the Macanese entered an identity marked by the strengthening of a collective memory intersecting between a point of origin (Macao) and a point of mythical origin (Por- tugal).10 This is especially illustrated by the fact that Hong Kong soon became the first exposure for many less privileged Macanese to formal education of the Por- tuguese language: although there were only about 300 Macanese in the colony by 1848, an imminent rush to set up private schools for the Portuguese children emerged in the decade due to fears of “los[ing] their cultural ties to Macao.”11 Prior to their arrival in the British colony, political instability in Portugal led to difficulties in consolidating sound educational institutions for the Macanese in Macao; thus, it would only be until 1871 that the Associação para a Instrução dos Macaneses (APIM) was formed to guarantee the continuation of education for the Macanese youth.12 In contrast to the situation in Macao, the first Portuguese school in Hong Kong was opened as early as in 1844 and between 1848 and 1850, four more schools would be established for the Macanese community. Apart from private schools, religious organizations also exerted efforts in the founding of the Canossian Sisters’ School for Catholic girls (1860) and the St. Saviour’s College for Catholic boys (1865, later renamed as the St. Joseph’s College), both of which taught Portuguese as a second language. This demand for and supply of educa- tion for the Portuguese community is demonstrated in the consistent foundation of schools in the Central District from 1842 to 1896 for Portuguese children by the

9 Simultaneously during this period, mainland Chinese, Indians, Americans and ­arrived in Hong Kong in hopes of making a fortune. 10 Alfredo Gomes Dias, “The Origins of Macao’s Community in . Hong Kong’s Emigra- tion (1850–1909),” Bulletin of Portuguese-Japanese Studies 17 (2008): 202. 11 Mário Pinharanda, “Socio-Historical Factors Involved in the Changes of the Creole Matrix of Makista,” in Katrine K. Wong and C.X. George Wei, eds., Macao- Cultural Interaction and Literary Representations (New York: Routledge, 2014), 34. 12 According to Pinharanda, due to repeated setbacks caused by Portugal’s political issues and diplomatic decline, the first lay school of Macao that used Portuguese as medium of instruction would only be founded in the year 1847 (Escola Principal de Instrução Primária), leading suc- cessively to efforts by local Macanese and Portuguese residents to open more schools for their children. For this, see Ibid., 32. 236 Catherine S. CHAN

colony’s Catholic institutions as according to the Hong Kong Catholic Diocesan Archives: 1842–1886 Church, Wellington Street, (Rebuilt in 1860) L. 50 1858–1879 Roman Catholic Seminary, Pottinger Street 1845–1852 Free School for Portuguese, Wellington Street 1860–1865 Chinese School for boys, Wellington Street 1860–1865 English School for boys, Wellington Street 1860–1865 Portuguese School for boys, Wellington Street 1866–1881 St. Savior’s College, Pottinger Street 1860–1861 English School for boys, AU: Please 1860–1861 Portuguese School for boys, Staunton Street confirm 1880–1896 Free Ragged School, whether any text [font] is 1887–1896 Free School, Bridges Street, by Sisters of Charity missing. 1894–1896 Sacred Family’s Family Chapel, Bridge Street 1888–1895 Charitable School. 1883–1896 Victoria Portuguese School 1883–1896 Victoria School (Private Schools)13

In addition to schooling, the Macanese community in Hong Kong also made attempts to maintain their Portuguese roots by establishing religious organi- zations and Portuguese publications. Of the former, J.P. Braga records: “for the first half-century after the setting up of the Catholic mission in Hong Kong, the congregations of the Catholic churches were almost entirely Portuguese.”14 Pub- lications included Portuguese newspapers A Voz Macaista (1846), Amigo de Pro- greso (1850), O Impulso ás Letras (1858–1969), O Português (1913) and Pró Pátria (1915–1917); two private libraries named Biblioteca Portuguesa and Biblioteca Lusitana were opened in 1857 and 1861 whilst various social and cultural events within the Portuguese community came to be organized by two prestigious clubs- Clube Português and Clube Lusitano. Leaving their home of Macao and arriving in a foreign land, the rush to establish Portuguese schools, print publications and organize religious and cultural activities remarkably reflected the imminent desire of the Macanese to stay connected with their Portuguese roots. In contrast with the slow cultural and educational developments in Macao, the rapid construc- tion of a Portuguese community in Hong Kong, notwithstanding the significantly small population of Portuguese subjects in the colony, reveals a few things about the migratory context of the Macanese community. In their study of Turkish-Dutch

13 “The Catholic Institutions in Hong Kong (1842–1896),” Hong Kong Catholic Diocesan Archives, http://archives.catholic.org.hk/Statistic/CIHK.htm (accessed 29 November 2015). 14 Braga, The Portuguese in Hong Kong, 162.  At the Edge of Two Worlds 237

Muslims, Verkuyten and Yildiz argue that ethnicity and religion are significant identity markers in migration15; the Macanese experience projects not only the emphasis of ethnicity and religion in the preservation of identity within a foreign condition, but further, the strengthening and accentuation of an imagined, mythi- cal identity previously disregarded in an old but familiar spatial situation. In other words, the imminent fear of losing a Creole Macanese identity gave rise to the actualization of an ethnic Portuguese identity in nineteenth century Hong Kong and as both identities became further entwined, the imagination of Portugal as a home was no longer as distant as it was in the context of Macao. Certainly, more evidence would help consolidate this idea and a detailed comparison of identity awareness in Macao and Hong Kong would help in affirming the theory.

Dis-identification Under a Historical Context

The desire to shift towards an ethnic Portuguese identity amongst the Macanese may be further explained and better understood under the unique context of Hong Kong as a British colony. Similar to any other colony, Hong Kong was no exception from the conformity of British colonial practices, filled with structural inequali- ties that situated the Europeans at the top and the Chinese at the bottom. Within this structure, the Portuguese mostly worked as backbones of English companies, marked by “preparedness… to work for much lower wages and [an] ability to speak English and Cantonese” that sadly, Stuart Braga observes “fixed them into a pattern of social and economic inferiority from which only a few escaped in the next century.”16 Surely it should not be neglected the achievements of extraordi- nary names like Leonardo d’ Almada e Castro,17 Jose Maria d’ Almada e Castro18

15 Maykel Verkuyten and Ali Aslan Yildiz, “National (Dis)identification and Ethnic and Reli- gious Identity: A Study among Turkish-Dutch Muslims,” Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, no. 10 (2007): 1448–1462. 16 Stuart Braga, “Making Impressions: The Adaptation of a Portuguese Family to Hong Kong, 1700–1950,” PhD diss., The Australian National University (October 2012), 106. 17 Leonardo’s career began in Macao as Superintendency of British Trade in China. In 1843, he arrived with Governor Pottinger and was appointed Chief Clerk for the Colonial Secretary in 1846, a position that would allow him in charge of all Portuguese workers and access to information on the sale of land near Hong Kong’s deep water harbor. 18 Jose Maria was Secretary in 1877 to Hong Kong’s 9th Governor Hennessy and was promoted to Chief Clerk before his death in 1881. 238 Catherine S. CHAN and later J.P. Braga19 and Leo d’ Almada e Castro20 who stood out amongst the Por- tuguese population. For the majority of the Portuguese population in Hong Kong, there was no denying that their hopes were instantly crushed under the racially stratified norms of colonial Hong Kong. British subjects in the colony objected against the appointment of Portuguese civil servants, since they were perceived as non-Europeans. These objections were particularly strident during the early opening of Hong Kong when higher positions were reserved for the British alone. In 1847, for instance, the China Mail printed “Letter of an Englishman,” an objection to Leonardo d’ Almada e Castro’s appointment as Chief Clerk, describ- ing Leonardo as an “Agent of the Propagandists” for his religious background.21 Obstacles to his further career advancement would be seen again in 1854: when the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for the Colonies directed Sir John Bowring to appoint Leonardo as Colonial Secretary on a local salary after his application for British citizenship, the idea was ousted by W.H. Mercer who later commented that Leonardo was no doubt an exceptional Portuguese but “hardly eligible for higher appointment.”22 A few decades later in 1878, Carvalho was cel- ebrated as the first Portuguese to be nominated in the Legislative Council; this, however, ended in failure owing to the outrage and rejection of the ruling British businessmen, bankers and public servants who perceived non-British subjects as aliens.23 Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, similar cases were recorded and the public perception of the Portuguese as alien citizens were commonplace within the norms of the colony.24 Unwilling to accept their fate, J.P. Braga in 1895 published a 95-page pamphlet entitled The Rights of Aliens in Hong Kong, denouncing the lack of justice in Hong Kong for the Portuguese. According to Braga, ironically against British principles of free trade and open competition, the Portuguese had then been perceived as second-class citizens,

19 Manager of the Hong Kong Telegraph during the early 20th century, J.P. remarkably became a member of the Sanitary Board from 1927 to 1930 and emerged as the first Portuguese to enter the Legislative Council where he served as unofficial member between 1929 and 1937. 20 Born and educated in Hong Kong, Leo was as a prominent barrister and was appointed unof- ficial member of the Legislative Council between 1937 and 1941, serving as member of the Execu- tive Council after the end of the Second World War until 1958. 21 Jorge Pereira Forjaz Collection, Old China Hands Archive, California State University Northridge, seen in “Over the Bamboo Ceiling,” 31 May 2013, Far East Currents, http://www. macstudies.net/2013/05/31/over-the-bamboo-ceiling-early-macanese-enterprise-in-hong-kong/ (accessed 30 November 2015). 22 G.B. Endacott, A Biographical Sketch-Book of Early Hong Kong (Singapore: Donald Moore for Eastern Universities Press, 1962), 121. 23 Braga, “Making Impressions,” 196. 24 Further examples can be founded in “Over the Bamboo Ceiling.”  At the Edge of Two Worlds 239 situated in between the British and Chinese populations.25 In 1936, the common dislike of the Portuguese in civil service went on and Braga continued to defend the Portuguese, this time in an article printed on the Hong Kong Telegraph where he raised the question “How can it proved that the Portuguese are robbing any other section of the community of employment?”26 Remarkably in Braga’s illustration of the Portuguese presence in civil service, his analysis of the racial composition in the colony’s junior clerical staff reveals a new identity for the Macanese. According to his figures, at the said level, there were during the 1930s, 789 Chinese, 39 Indians, 21 Portuguese, 9 British and 4 Eurasians27; distinctive from Eurasians, the Portuguese in this example no longer identifies with a mixed racial background of Portuguese descent and Asian blood. Placed in the context of a growing proportion of local-born Portuguese and the continuous immigration of Macanese from Macao, such insistence of being cat- egorized as Portuguese demonstrates a degree of dis-identification from their previous Creole identity, which had been acknowledged since the sixteenth century.28 In 1897, of the 2,263 Portuguese in Hong Kong, 1,214 were local-born; 932 came from Macao and only 108 presumably came from Portugal or Goa.29 Despite the sustained affiliation with their place of origin and a growing distance between Hong Kong’s Portuguese and their mythical homeland of Portugal, the confinements of racial stratification in Hong Kong seemed to have propelled the Macanese to identify more with their imagined nation and less with their host colony and actual birthplace due to issues of rejection on the basis of ethnic- ity. This is further exemplified by Stuart Braga’s vivid descriptions of the Portu- guese and the Eurasians, which leads one to ponder whether Braga was in fact speaking of Portuguese families belonging to Portuguese ancestry alone or if the

25 José Pedro Braga, The Rights of Aliens in Hong Kong: Being a Record of the Discussion Carried on Through the Medium of the Public Press as to the Employment of Aliens in the Colony (Hong Kong: Noronha & Co., 1895). 26 José Pedro Braga, “Some Light on the Subject of ‘Other’ Employees; How Can It be Proved that the Portuguese are Robbing Other Section of the Community of Employment? Special to the Telegraph,” The Hong Kong Telegraph, 9 September 1936, 7. 27 Ibid. 28 In 1533, the Portuguese arrived at Macao, some from Portugal and others from already Eur- asian backgrounds. This group of peoples came to be descendants of the Macanese. The Creo- lization of the Macanese is further witnessed in another 16th century description that refers to Macanese as being born to a European father and Eurasian mother or having Eurasian parents. For this, see Jose Feliciano Marques Pereira, Ta-Ssi-Yang-Kuo: Archivos e Annaes do Extremo-­ Oriente Portugues, 2nd ed., S. 1, vols. 3–4 (1901–1903); (Macau: Direccao dos Servicos de Educai- jao, Arquivo Hist6rico, 1984), 821–822. 29 Braga, “Making Impressions,” 495. 240 Catherine S. CHAN

­Portuguese indeed did dis-identify with their Creole identities to escape the con- demnations of being taboo and half-caste as Eurasians in colonial Hong Kong30:

There may have been a few others who bothered, but they were not Portuguese. There was one other community – if that is the term for a small group of people ostracized even more completely than the Portuguese. These were the Eurasians, the product of a union between a European man and a Chinese woman. Marriage between the races was a very rare circum- stance, so a Eurasian was more commonly the result of a mesalliance. Eurasians were com- monly held to have all the vices and none of the virtues of both parents, and in the thinking of the time, that made them tend towards crime and perversion, usually homosexuality. If the Portuguese were down-trodden, Eurasians were pariahs to both the British and Chinese communities.31

Portuguese? Macanese? Eurasian? European?

As previous works on migrant identities have pointed out, the dialectic interplay of self-representation is a product of identification influenced by both interper- sonal differentiation and social categorization.32 Under this context, identity becomes a fluid choice depending on situation and social conditions, leading to different extents of conflict between social categorization and self-representa- tion and thus, the notion of identity negotiation.33 The fact that the Portuguese had already been Creolized prior to their arrival combined with their ambitions of social mobility in a socially-stratified, hybrid Hong Kong, undoubtedly served in complicating the Portuguese question of identity negotiation and later, recon- struction. Desiring to climb upwards and coming to terms with the social realities of the British colony, the identification of “local Portuguese” by 1931 was largely split between British citizens and Portuguese citizens.34 According to the census

30 This description was given by Sir Vandeleur Grayburn, Chief Manager of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. For this, see Frank H.H. King, “Hongkong Bankers Inter-war, I: Policy and Managers,” in Frank H.H. King, Catherine E. King and David J.S. King, eds., The Hongkong Bank ­between the Wars and the Bank Interned, 1919–1945: Return from Grandeur (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1988), 288. 31 Ibid., 221. 32 Kay Deaux, “Reconstructing Social Identity,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 19, no. 1 (1993): 4–12; Bernd Simon, Identity in Modern Society: A Social-Psychological Perspective (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2004). 33 William B. Swann, “Identity Negotiation: Where Two Roads Meet,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53, no. 1 (1987): 1038–1051. 34 From a 1931 census, of the 3,183 local Portuguese, 1,089 claimed to be British citizens and 2,088 entered themselves as Portuguese citizens; quoting Stuart Braga: “The report remarked,  At the Edge of Two Worlds 241 tabulated in November, there were 2,789 local Portuguese in Hong Kong of which 473 were Chinese; if based on place of birth, of the 3,197 Portuguese, only four were born in Portugal whom entered themselves as Macanese whereas 2,362 were born in Hong Kong and 572 in Macao.35 Surprisingly, although a considerable pro- portion of the Portuguese was either born in Hong Kong or originally from Macao, there had been no signs of association to Hong Kong or Macao. A remarkable deviation from other cases of Portuguese migration may be observed: instead of conforming to their Creole identity, the local Portuguese in colonial Hong Kong refused categorization as Eurasian and/or Creole. Certainly, the extent of Portuguese dis-identification with their previous identity in Hong Kong requires further analysis, particularly of transformations in linguistic practices and everyday habits. A number of newspaper editorials printed on the South China Morning Post in the twentieth century reveal public debate over Portuguese identity. In 1918, a gentleman reacted negatively to accu- sations concerning Portuguese refusal to serve during the war and emphasized that there could only be one category of Portuguese under the simple reason that a Portuguese alien could not be simultaneously a British subject; as a concluding remark, the writer pointed out: “…I am sure, that we, the Portuguese, who are serving the colony are doing so under special permission from our Home Govern- ment, granted through our Consul,” therefore making a strong disparity between Portuguese and local Portuguese of British citizenship. This was enlightened in 1931 when the Portuguese Consul General suggested that local Portuguese may instead of being identified as Portuguese citizens, be distinguished between Goanese, Macanese, Hong Kongese and Portuguese.36 In the 1930s, public discourse regarding the complexities of identifying the Portuguese would continue, paying tribute to the Macanese predecessors of the local Portuguese in Hong Kong:

it is too often forgotten here, how much Hong Kong in its early days depended upon Macao. It is no exaggeration to say that the meteoric rise of Hong Kong- and later of Shanghai- was largely due to the capability and zeal of numerous Macanese families… in short, the

as had been noted more than thirty years earlier, that the Portuguese were slow to adopt British citizenship. Given the extent of discrimination against them, it is not hard to see why.” Braga, “Making Impressions,” 496. 35 The numbers in the report do not seem to be consistent; instead of 3,197, there should have been 3,177 local Portuguese in total. Source from “Puzzle for Census Officers,” South China Morn- ing Post, 9 November 1931, 14. 36 Rev. FA Fadden, “A Bird’s-Eye View By Argus,” South China Morning Post, 14 August 1931, 1. 242 Catherine S. CHAN

­Portuguese community is one of two-fold, but fortunately undivided loyalty, to Macao and Portugal on the one hand, and to the British colony in which they live on the other.37

Indeed despite the increasing participation of some notable Eurasians in the gov- ernment, their inferiority in public perception continued in the twentieth century. In 1928, for instance, a description of Eurasians is as follows: “Look at the Eur- asian. He looks a good deal like our mestizo Spanish-Filipino. In Hong Kong the Eurasians is a mixture of a Portuguese or English father and a Chinese mother. In all respects he moves and acts- or tries to move and act- like a European: his dress, his speech, his mannerisms. But the Europeans and Chinese do not con- sider him as of their own kind.”38 Although yet to be affirmed, this social back- ground perhaps shaped the self-identification of the Portuguese in Hong Kong as strictly European, resulting in subsequent conflict between self and public per- ception. Shortly before the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in July 1940, two gentlemen disputed over the definition of being Portuguese in two letters to the newspaper’s editorial, particularly in light of evacuation priorities being given to the Portuguese before the Eurasians. The first gentleman, unhappy that the Portu- guese were registered for evacuation before British Eurasians, argued against this decision by calling local Portuguese “Macanese or Goanese born in Hong Kong, Macao or India” as “strictly Eurasian.”39 In response to this claim, the other gen- tleman, presumably a Portuguese, lashed back by insisting that the Portuguese, even if local-born, belonged to European ancestors from Portugal; the highlight of his letter, however, came in his strong distinction between Portuguese and Macanese: “[There is] no proof that Portuguese in general have Chinese blood. We admit that we too have Eurasians just like any other nation in the world… Just because some of them are so, does not mean that we are mixed…”40 This again points back to the question of a split within the Portuguese community and calls for a more in-depth investigation of the negotiation of identity of the Portuguese in self and public perception. Were the Portuguese in Hong Kong not Macanese? With ethnic roots grounded in Macao less than a century earlier, should the Hong Kong Macanese then be considered more European and less Eurasian? If the aforementioned arguments are valid, were the Portuguese distinguishing themselves from their own? This contradicting picture of the local Portuguese may be made in another account

37 “Portuguese Republic: Anniversary of Foundation to be Observed To-day; Record of Progress as Nation,” South China Morning Post, 5 October 1939, 9. 38 “As Others See Us: The Impressions of A Filipino; Hong Kong Roads,” South China Morning Post, 18 April 1928, 10. 39 O.I.C.U., “Correspondence: Status of Eurasians (To the Editor, S.C.M. Post), 16 July 1940, 7. 40 Non-Eurasian, “Eurasians and Others,” South China Morning Post, 18 July 1940, 8.  At the Edge of Two Worlds 243 from 1940 where a writer using the pen name “Macanese” made a bold yet con- fusing statement in defining the Portuguese of Hong Kong, quoting “…there is no classification of ‘Eurasian’ by the Portuguese. There is no such treatment. We are all very proud of having the exceptional privilege of being Portuguese citi- zens and have full confidence in our Government which is the best.”41 Having identified himself as a Macanese, his claim raises further questions about the complexities of the Portuguese identity in Hong Kong. If a Macanese in the colony was not to be considered Eurasian, must he be regarded as European or was the Macanese identity, categorised most often under the general umbrella of a Por- tuguese identity in fact an independent entity that could not be classified at all under the categories of European or Eurasian? Certainly, having repeatedly (been challenged, efeated and failed by the racial limits of colonial Hong Kong, the Por- tuguese community in Hong Kong scrambled to imagine their own haven, one that purposefully distanced their identification with an original homeland and brought them closer to the mythical homeland that had never been.

Conclusion

Across borders and encompassing all ages, identity construction has never ceased to witness inevitable interaction between self and other. As De Beauvoir stated in 1949, the self no doubt needs the other to self-represent.42 In the process of iden- tity negotiation and reconstruction of the Portuguese community in Hong Kong, the Creole identity that found its beginnings in Macao and was subsequently brought by the Portuguese to the newfound colony played its purpose in the making of a new Portuguese self. This is especially obvious when the Portuguese narrative is located in the bigger process of their attempt to appropriate, re-inter- pret and adapt to Hong Kong’s social boundaries as a British colony. Learning of the inferiority of being Eurasian and dissatisfied with the constraints of not being British, the Portuguese struggled in maintaining a self-identification that was strictly European. This then, as previously demonstrated, resulted in divergence between self and public perception, as well as another degree of othering within the Portuguese community itself.

41 Macanese, “Registration & Evacuation: (To the Editor, S.C.M.P.),” South China Morning Post, 20 July 1940, 7. 42 Simone De Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe (: Gallimard, 1949). 244 Catherine S. CHAN

For migrants looking to find settlement, progress and advancement in a foreign situation, the other and the self are never clearly defined as constants43; instead, identity references become selective choices, some of which are utilized and others suppressed or forgotten in order to situate oneself within a bigger social context. Notably in the case of Hong Kong’s Portuguese, different levels of other and self were at work, making it exceptionally difficult to define a dichotomous division between representations of “them” and “us” to the extent that identity became actively negotiated by different actors; “them” could refer to non-Portu- guese, Portuguese of a strict European ancestral lineage (who were born in Macao or Hong Kong and have never been to Portugal) or Macanese Eurasians and “us,” on the other hand, could refer to Portuguese or Portuguese Eurasians or even Macanese. Either way, the Portuguese experience in Hong Kong affirms a great level of interaction between the complexities of identity construction and the rigidity of British colonial stratification. Placed finally in existing discourse that commonly defines identity into two poles: one as a fixed and possessive prop- erty44 and another as unstable and a process,45 the Portuguese identity demon- strates a unique mixture of both, where Creole identity may just have worked conveniently as a property mobilized in the process of their brand new becoming.

43 MariaCaterina La Barbera, “Identity and Migration: An Introduction,” in MariaCaterina La Barbera, ed., Identity and Migration in : Multidisciplinary Perspectives (AG, Cham: Spring- er International Publishing, 2014), 4. 44 Floya Anthias, “Belongings in a Globalizing and Unequal World: Rethinking Translocations,” in Nira Yuval-Davis, Kalpana Kannabiran and Ulrike Vieten, eds., Sage Studies in International : The Situated Politics of Belonging (London: SAGE Publications, Ltd., 2006), 17–32. 45 Richard Jenkins, Social Identity (London: Taylor and Francis, 2008).